


underdeveloped images

by goldbooksblack



Series: rouge on the lens [2]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: ACoTaR AU, F/M, London AU, Modern AU, Modern Era, WWII AU, nyc au, rome AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2019-11-12 02:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18002174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldbooksblack/pseuds/goldbooksblack
Summary: Photos in the lives of Nesta and Cassian that are never taken.A companion piece to rouge on the lens.





	1. new york city, 1925

**Author's Note:**

> So . . . here we are again. 
> 
> I thought for a long, long time about whether or not I was going to continue rouge on the lens. One, because there's not really anything to continue, and two, because why ruin a good thing? 
> 
> But I tried to dig deep into my heart, and this is what I found. 
> 
> rotl occupies a significant portion of my heart and my mind. It's one of two works I've written that I can safely say I've never regretted. Writing it was a religious experience, the most emotional I've ever felt writing something. I didn't care if no one reviewed or praised or kudos-ed it. I loved what I wrote. And that, for me, was the best I've felt in a long, long time. 
> 
> But this collection isn't about trying to replicate that high. It's about where my mind has taken me, and where my creativity has urged me. Writing rotl and writing this has truly made me understand why authors say they have a "duty" to finish their story. I get it now. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading more about Nesta and Cassian, just as I have enjoyed writing more about them.

And, all at once, it was too much.

“Nesta,” her husband purred. His hand slid on top of hers. She wished she could pull it away, make a snide remark about its clamminess or excess moisture. But, as always, Tomas was impeccable. On the outside, at least. “Darling, you seem . . . otherwise occupied.”

“I didn’t hear anything worth paying attention to.” The words were punctuated by a casual sip from her champagne flute. Across the table, Mrs. Wethers let out a tiny gasp, hand flying to her mouth. Her husband looked equally perplexed and furious at the same time. It had, after all, been months since they had seen her. And, fools as they were, they had forgotten the hurricane that was Nesta Archeron.

Tomas laughed easily, snaking a hand to her back. “Oh, don’t look so scandalized, my dear Mrs. Wethers. It’s been a little while since we’ve all seen Nesta; the shock will pass.”

She wanted to tear his throat out. For being right, for being smug, for being there. But she was frozen. The peach tulle dress she was wearing was itchy and hot, but she couldn’t take it off. The jewels at her neck were heavy and gaudy, but she had put them on. She hadn’t finished her miniscule portion of broth because her stomach both wailed for and shrank away from more. Nesta was lost; purgatory on earth had never looked so beautiful. 

“So where did you two run off to for your honeymoon? We haven’t seen you all season,” Mr. Thompson, a balding man in his fifties with beady eyes, lifted a shaky cup of tea to his lips. 

“Oh, just a little short trip upstate to the Catskills,” Tomas replied efficiently. 

“The Catskills? Why, you could take a car up there every weekend, it’s so close,” Mrs. Peat, a year younger than Nesta, turned to her husband. “Actually, as a matter of fact, we were there sometime around your honeymoon, were we not?”

Mr. Peat, as youthful as his wife, smiled gently at her. “Yes, I believe so. You see,” he said to the entire table, not missing a beat as he incorporated the rest of the group into their conversation, “Margaret and I seek out every possible opportunity to be there. It’s just so beautiful.”

Was that what it was supposed to look like? Two impossibly young people, lost in their own memories? Was that what love was supposed to look like? Nesta stared at the Peats, the way he whispered something in her ear that made her giggle. The way she absentmindedly traced the back of his hand as he spoke to Mr. Wethers, on his left. 

Was it even possible to be that young? Nesta had never been young. Had never felt young. Her mother had not been cruel; Elizabeth Archeron had simply been . . . absent. One of those vain, self-interested women who were the product of their time, whose sole child-rearing philosophy was to imprint themselves onto their children. Neatly pleated skirts, crisp ironed blouses, low heels with a strap around the ankle; that had been Nesta’s childhood. And when her mother had died, her father’s bankruptcy had quickly followed, like a shadow to death, and it had been too late. 

Thrown out of their lavish apartment, belongings tossed after them onto the dirty streets of New York, their old friends’ faces blank when they passed them on the street. Not that it happened much after their fall. Nesta had tried, tried to forgive. Tried to pick up the pieces like Elain and Feyre and turn the other cheek, but she couldn’t. Not when every time she laid eyes on her father, she saw only failure. His inability to work, spurred by some mental change from the debt; sitting in front of the window every day, staring blankly. She’d detested him for it. She still did. 

It had changed when she’d met Tomas. They’d known each other as children; his mother and her mother sipping tea together every Wednesday, paying them no mind. Nesta hadn’t liked him then, and she hadn’t liked him when they’d reunited. Tomas had been vain and self-interested, with a streak of impatience that could quickly spiral into destructiveness—as a child. When Nesta had set her eyes on him again, over a decade later, at a gala, he’d been the same. Only this time, he’d learned to hide it underneath a veneer of impeccable manners and a handsome smile. 

But she’d fooled herself. For a time. That he would be enough, that she was a great sacrificial virgin marrying him for the sake of her family. 

That had been before . . . him. 

Nesta hadn’t breathed his name, hadn’t so much as allowed herself that luxury, since she had boarded the steamship back to New York. No. Those thoughts would be buried deep within her heart, until she lay cold and stiff underneath dirt and rain and wind at the end. 

It had been Feyre who had pushed her out the door, her eyes narrowed.  _ “You’re making a mistake,” _ she’d told Nesta plainly. Nesta had opened her mouth, ready to scream something back at her, though her heart was empty and her mind knew she was right. But her sister had cut her off.  _ “And I know nothing will deter you once it is done. But you must be sure. Take time. And I—Father, Elain, and I—will know that you are certain when you return. If you return.” _

_ If. _ Nesta had scoffed at such a word when she’d finally boarded the ship en route to Europe, ticket paid for by selling one of Tomas’s bejeweled engagement presents. 

What  _ if? _

~*~

“That was awfully dull, wasn’t it, darling?”

“Mmh.”

“James Peat is such a . . . limited fellow, to be kind.” Tomas began to unlace his shoes, his foot propped up on a bench. “It’s nearly impossible to wrangle any decent conversation out of him, and even then, it’s pulling teeth.” 

“Yes, dear.” 

Tomas straightened, and Nesta was acutely aware of his eyes on hers. She sat at her vanity, fingers fiddling with heavy earrings. Avoiding her husband’s gaze in the mirror. There were pins and jewels to take off. Pins and jewels.

“Nesta.” His palms came down heavy on her shoulders, and Nesta resisted the urge to move. To get away. “Are you quite all right?”

She did not mistake the tone of his voice for anything but calculating. “Yes. I’m fine.”

“Good.” The weight lifted from her skin, and she tried not to let her body shake as she exhaled. Tomas turned away from her. This time, Nesta kept her eyes closely on him in the mirror. The dark sapphire of his nightclothes hid him against the dimness of the room. “Nesta, we have not been married long. And I know that you may have . . . encountered misgivings on your trip to Europe.”

How. How did he know? Did he know? Her heart began to pound wildly, and Nesta gripped the wooden base of her chair before responding carefully, “What do you mean, Tomas?”

“Know this, Nesta. Know that I was faithful that month you were gone.” Suddenly, he was gripping her hands in his, a tight grasp. “I could have had any woman. You leaving might as well have been a sign of rejection, despite anything your family said.” Tomas let go with a scoff, his head tilted towards the ceiling. “The things your sister said to me.” He shook his head. “I understand why everyone is so concerned about her now. She ought to be mute for the disrespect she showed me.” 

Anger flared to life inside Nesta, but it was quickly overshadowed by Tomas continuing. “We entered our union with . . . a good understanding of our mutual situations, yes?”

“What do you mean?”

“You needed my money. You  _ need _ my money. And I . . .” His gaze snapped to hers, and a chill ran down Nesta’s spine. “I need an heir.”

She swallowed roughly. “Yes.”

He held out his hand. “Then come, wife, and let us complete the exchange.”

~*~

Tomas had thrusted and thrusted. Nesta had lain limp underneath him until he’d let out a labored grunt and collapsed on top of her. And it had been over. 

No words passed between them as he rolled off of her. Nor as she turned over on her side to face the darker side of the room, staring out into the emptiness. 

Would he have loved her? Would they have been able to love each other, two lost souls in a foreign city? Would they have sustained their passion? Perhaps he would have become a wildly successful photographer, touring the world with her on his arm, proud to be by his side. She would have settled for that. No. Nesta would have fought for it, fought for the freedom to be domestic. Instead, she had been torn apart and sewn together, a discombobulated mess of patchwork quilt; one square for the girl that had been lost in the wake of a mother’s death; another, for the innocence that had morphed into anger in the form of an old man’s hunched shadow; one in the corner for the gargantuan diamond that decorated her left hand; and the last. 

For the first and last piece of her heart, freely given.

~*~

Years later, Françoise Mandray will stand on the bright streets of the  _ L’Avenue des Champs-Élysées. _ She will stand still in the midst of the busy crowd, and she will look towards the Arc de Triomphe. She will be an old woman by then, with her own children and grandchildren. 

But Françoise will still visit Paris. She will walk along the banks of the Seine, drink coffee at a streetside cafe, and eat croissants every morning. It will not be her wish to visit Paris. No,  _ wish _ is not the right word for it. For her, Paris will an obligation, a magnetic tugging of her soul that has haunted her since her birth. 

She will understand. Understand why her mother never made a genuine effort to coddle, comfort, raise her. Understand why her mother refused to buy anything from France, refused to visit the country. Standing on that sidewalk one humid afternoon, she will feel as if there is enough forgiveness in her heart to let go of her bitterness. To let go of her sorrow and her abandonment. A mother’s love is supposed to be God-given; for Françoise it will not be. 

There will be no traces of Cassian Tassos in Françoise’s life, not even a single photograph. Françoise will never know that decades and decades ago, right where she will stand, her mother fell in love with a man with beautiful brown eyes and a polished lens. 

But Nesta’s daughter will walk the streets of Paris. She will complete the journey her mother started.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven’t had an A/N in a while, but I thought I’d take the time to analyze this chapter for you and for me. Because I had a lot of emotions while writing this.
> 
> There are a lot of questions I had to wrestle with in this chapter. Will we see Nesta’s daughter? Will she talk about Nesta? How was Nesta, as a mother?
> 
> The answer (or my answer)? Horrible.
> 
> I think there will be a lot of people (share your comments! I’d love to discuss this!) who will argue that Nesta’s soul, the very essence of her character, is to feel too much, and that would also extend to her daughter. But I think you have to remember that while Nesta might have loved her daughter, a large part of her always saw her as the symbol of something she never wanted. She looked, in part, like Tomas; she grew up in the same society Nesta hated; and she had no trace of the life Nesta could have had. There’s a certain risk to pinning everything on love and lost love. Love and relationships requires a connection between multiple people. And yet you are not defined by your connection to your family or your significant other. You retain your own individualism, your own individual choices.
> 
> So would Nesta have loved her daughter if Cassian had been the father? It’s hard to say. Like I mentioned before, Nesta did love Françoise. But there is a such thing as loving so opaquely that the receiver doesn’t know it. I would imagine Françoise had a lonely childhood, with her father disappointed that she wasn’t a boy and her mother never really paying attention to her. Nesta could have loved her, but without any verbal or physical cues, Françoise would have been left to make her own conclusions—messages that would damage her for the rest of her life.
> 
> And yet Nesta is fundamentally different from her mother. Elizabeth and Nesta were caught in the same situation, but Elizabeth genuinely didn’t care for any of it. Given the motivation, Nesta would have thrown herself into parenting, or at least made a better effort to do so. The tragic part is that no one wants to be like their parents—but Nesta is irrevocably pushed into donning that peach tulle dress and living a frivolous life with a neglected child.
> 
> I believe that Nesta, even if she didn’t want children, would have been more open to the idea with Cassian; she certainly would have had more encouragement from him than Tomas. But I suppose you also have to remember that in Tomas’s eyes, neither Nesta nor Françoise are of much value. And so you have this mother-daughter pair lumped together but not really wanting to be together.
> 
> Ultimately, in my mind, Nesta didn’t ignore Françoise wholly because she wasn’t Cassian’s and because she tied her down to New York instead of Paris. I think it’s a mix of longing for what could have been, loathing her life, and lack of support from herself and her husband (not that she would want his hand in raising children anyway). I think we have to accept Nesta’s selfishness and pain and pettiness, and that inability to care for a child as she should have been cared for.


	2. london, 1940-1941

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't quite do this chapter justice for how much I loved the original, but I promise the Rome chapter coming up will be much better.

The thing about war was that it ate, absorbed, voraciously leeched off of everything else. The cloud of smoke in London settled like a film over the streets. Nesta could feel it on her clothes, her skin, under her nails.

When Nesta was a child, she saw the fossil of a fly trapped in amber. It was stopped in the middle of moving, wings upright as if struggling to escape. 

That was how the days went by now. 

The other nurses didn’t ask after her. There was a war. Each of them carried their own silent burden; a name, a sound, a touch. There was no use looking for sympathy where one would not find it. But there would be moments. Moments where Nesta would stand cleaning out bedpans, the grime and stench of excrement defiling the room, and she would think. Was this how Cassian had died? Was this how the man she had loved had died, perhaps in the company of dirty, bloody soldiers? Moments where she was suturing a shaking soldier up, and she would clench her stomach in a tight inhale. Had he died in pain? From a bullet wound? From sickness or infection? Had there been someone to treat him, someone to comfort him and bless him? 

For the first time in six years, Nesta Archeron went to church. 

The last time she had stepped foot inside one was when her father had died, and that had only happened because her sister had pleaded with her. But now she went of her own accord. She sat in the pews. There was no service. She just sat. 

She sat and she wept. 

Cassian had no family that was not in the war. No one to claim his things. The law would not recognize her as anything. All of Cassian’s belongings—his clothes, his books, his pens and pencils and dust—belonged to the government. Nesta wanted to scream until her throat was desert dry, that she was his wife, his everything. But she couldn’t. Had she begged Cassian to marry her before he left, he would have. He would have dropped everything and ran with her to city hall, stood in line behind the dozens of other young couples that were wedding before deployment. He would have asked her to straighten his crinkled uniform with a smirk on his face, and ask her “you’re very forward, aren’t you?” when she’d tug at his collar a bit too hard. She would roll her eyes and yank it more insistently for good measure. He’d take his chance and lean down to kiss her and—

—no. 

The tears burned into Nesta’s skin. Stupid girl. How, how the hell had she let this happen? She had passed more than twenty years with her heart in an iron cage, just to let it loose at the sight of the first handsome man. She was a fool, and if she hadn’t known then, she knew it now. 

“Archeron.” Another nurse stood at the entrance to the church. “We have a new group of soldiers coming in.”

“I’ll be there.” Her voice patched itself back together. Nesta waited until the nurse’s footsteps faded away, then stood. 

She brushed the dust off her uniform and returned to work. 

~*~

Nesta will marry well. 

He will be a rich, tall, handsome man, with gray eyes like hers. He will be kind, if a little distant to her, but that’s no matter. She will be the same.

They will have no children, but they will own a large flat in Belgravia. There Nesta, even when she is very old and nearly deaf, will be able to hear the honking of cars down in the street and the shouts of pedestrians walking by. The sound will never fail to silence her; it sounds so utterly like the London of her youth that sometimes she believes she is still twenty-something and the city is still war-darkened. 

She will become Rhysand’s sister-in-law. Rhysand will come home, settle in London, meet her sister Feyre by chance, get married, have children. And Nesta will watch it all from the edge of the scene. She will offer a perfunctory smile and satisfactory claps. 

She and Rhysand will speak as little of Cassian as possible. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out my Tumblr: [goldbooksblack](https://goldbooksblack.tumblr.com/) for more!  
> 


	3. rome, 2019

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rome, 1953 was probably one of my favorite chapters from rotl. The same sentiments apply to this one.

At first, he didn’t believe it. Didn’t believe that she would just up and leave, just like that. They had been together just before he’d found out. He waited for hours outside her hotel only to have the concierge come out. “If you’re looking for the movie stars, they’re gone.”

“What do you mean they’re gone?” Cassian breathed.  _ Nesta. _ No, Nesta would never—

The concierge shrugged. “They checked out this morning. Almost the whole street was closed so they could move all of their people out.”

_ This morning. _ This morning he had been at home. On the outskirts of the city. Developing the photos he had taken of Nesta their second time in the garden. They had rubbed against each other in his pockets as he’d run eagerly to find her. Cassian had been afraid they would scratch and he’d have to give Nesta damaged pictures of her own face.

It didn’t appear as if it was an issue anymore.

“I—” Cassian opened, then closed his mouth.  _ “Grazie,” _ he murmured to the concierge, who nodded and went back inside the hotel. Cassian stood alone in the middle of the cobbled street.

His head spun. How could this happen? Nesta had shown no signs of leaving, much less so soon. He’d known that the movie was done, or almost done, but no one had told him . . . Told him what? That months of his life—a life so different from the rest of it that it seemed like a second entity—would be able to disappear without a trace? That he and the rest of the locals who had played host and rubbed elbows with the top names in Hollywood would be forgotten behind a burning sun and whispers of coffee? 

That the woman he loved would so easily abandon him?

“No,” Cassian said aloud. No. He refused to believe it, refused to accept it. Nesta would not be so cruel. The woman he knew—the one who took her cappuccino with extra steamed milk, the one who was unafraid to talk back to the men who thought they knew better than her,  _ the one who loved him _ —would never have done this.

And yet she had.

Did she love him? He had told her he did, and she had hesitated. Was that what she was about to say? That she did not love him? Had she taken off as some sort of twisted mercy as to save him from the embarrassment?

The sun beat down on Cassian, standing in the middle of the street, lost and alone.

~*~

The questions will haunt him for the rest of his life. Their ferocity is faithfully reignited every few months or years, when the local cinema plasters posters on their walls.  _ NESTA ARCHERON, _ they announce,  _ AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HER BEFORE! _

_ As you’ve never seen her before.  _ Savage heat will run through him. His hands will twitch, and he will nearly move to grab and tear the poster down. 

But in the end, he won’t. He won’t speak or scream or even move. Because Nesta had  _ left him. _ She had left him. Without notice, without words, without movement. So he will do the same. Miles across the ocean, she will never know about it or even hear of it. But Cassian will embark on this futile journey of vengeance. A tree felled in a forest without people is the only sort of logging unheard. But that will matter little. 

In the end, he will have the last laugh. 

~*~

_ “Nonno,” _ his granddaughter whines, pulling at his wrinkled hand. “You didn’t finish your story.”

He chuckles at her imploring face. “Sofia, I did.”

“No,” she insists. “You didn’t tell me what happened in the end.”

“In the end?” He cocks an eyebrow. “I’m not dead yet,  _ cara.” _

She rolls her eyes, every bit the smartass that he was. “I know that. But . . . is she . . . dead?”

Cassian feels it like a stab to the heart. His granddaughter is only eight. Eight, and intimidatingly intelligent, but still just a child. “Yes, Sofia, she is.”

“What happened?”

He drops her hand. The words stir in him pure pain.  _ What happened? _ The exact words he had wrestled with in the days following her departure.  _ What happened? _ The exact words he had whispered to himself whenever he heard news of her. 

_ WHAT HAPPENED? _ The American newspapers had asked in 1964. Ten years after the film had been released. 

“She overdosed,  _ cara.” _ His daughter would likely kill him later for even talking to Sofia about such things. 

Sofia tilts her head. “Overdosed . . .?”

“It means she took too much medicine, Sofia, that’s it.” 

“Oh.” 

He would never tell her the truth. That Nesta had been found in bed, unconscious, an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her bathroom. That the media frenzy surrounding it had been awful and invasive in Rome, as gossip column writers explored the location of Nesta Archeron’s most famous film. That still no one knew what to make of it. Nesta had been an insomniac, and stress had consumed her life—working on films or not. She could have taken the pills in an effort to sleep, and had accidentally overdosed, or . . . 

Or. 

Cassian expels the thoughts from his mind. It is a mystery best left buried in the depths of Hollywood. It is what she would have wanted.

But could he say that? Could he claim to know what she would want, what she had wanted? Did a few months of being in love grant a man that right? Cassian had been married to the same woman for thirty-nine years before she passed three summers ago. Her memory had been laid to rest, but the memory of a woman from years and years ago still persisted. 

“Sofia?” His daughter’s footsteps follow her voice. 

“Mamma,” Sofia leaps out of his lap and runs to her mother. 

His daughter chuckles. “Did you have fun with your grandfather?”

“Yes, mamma.  _ Nonno _ told me all about an actress he used to know.”

“Really?” His daughter hefts Sofia into her arms. Sofia nods insistently. “How come I’ve never heard this story?”

“You were never interested in my stories,” Cassian reminds her.  _ And I didn’t feel comfortable telling you the story of a woman whom I loved who wasn’t your mother. _

“Well, Sofia will just have to tell it to me someday. Won’t you?” His daughter brushes her fingertip over Sofia’s nose and she giggles. “But for now, dinner.”

“I’ll be there in a moment,” Cassian replies. He leans back in his chair and watches as his daughter and granddaughter walk off. 

He has felt old, so old recently that he wonders if he is ill. He has been reminiscing about the past much too often, his mind running circles around his soul. He would be lying if he says that he hadn’t thought about Nesta in years. But he had been good at tampering down those memories when they had surfaced. Today, they had come up for air and he had done nothing to push them back down underneath the waves. He had allowed them to stay. And he had given them to his granddaughter, to little Sofia. 

He will never know why Nesta left. If there had been a reason beyond ending a foreign fling. But here, at the end of his life, Cassian chooses. He sifts through all the possibilities, all the conspiracies he had harbored for decades, and he picks one. 

Nesta loved him. He loved Nesta. And whatever had separated them, he lets it go. In his mind, he ties up his photographs with twine and lights them on fire. The ashes catch in his old camera box. He walks to the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. Then, pinch by pinch, he buries her memory down below, returning it to the crashing waves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out my Tumblr: [goldbooksblack](https://goldbooksblack.tumblr.com/) for more!  
> 


End file.
